And while many online course creators hope to eventually earn a full-time income selling their courses, most of them build their business part-time until they can confidently commit to it full-time without putting their income at risk.

What constitutes a full-time income?

We asked around, and it turns out that for most online course creators, the amount of annual revenue needed to justify working full-time on their business is $100,000.

In other words, it takes approximately $100,000 in annual revenue, as a business owner, to generate a profit that is comparable to the annual salary of an average employee.

With that in mind, we reached out to our network of course creators who have generated over $100,000 in annual revenue from their online courses. Our goal was to identify a proven framework for growing an online course business to 6-figures or more in annual revenue – one that can be applied even if you’re starting from scratch (no list, audience, etc.) or building your business part-time.

Fun fact: According to Global Rich List, if you earn $100,000 (USD) in a single year, this immediately places you in the top 0.08% of income earners worldwide. Not bad!

5 Myths of Building a Successful Online Course Business

After asking more than a dozen 6-figure course creators how they built their business, we uncovered several false, yet commonly believed, assumptions about what it takes to build a successful business selling online courses.

We’d like to officially dispel these myths for you now:

Myth #1: You need big launches to build a big business

Despite the hype, big launches are absolutely not a requirement for building a successful online course business. Many course creators, particularly those who run membership sites with recurring monthly subscriptions, avoid the launch model entirely. Instead, they create automated sales and marketing systems that attract new customers on a consistent basis.

It’s also worth noting that, almost without exception, the people who execute online course launches that generate tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue in a short period of time have several advantages, including:

Established brands (authority in their marketplace)

Several years of business and marketing experience

A track record of other course and/or product launches (aka practice!)

Large audiences that know, like, and trust them (email lists, social media followers, etc.)

Relationships with joint venture partners that help promote their course

A respectable marketing budget and strategy for their launch

People and systems in place to help prevent mishaps

Since the vast majority of online course creators do not possess these advantages, at least not in the early stages of building their business, executing an elaborate and finely tuned course launch just isn’t feasible. That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, but for most early stage course creators, there are better things you can do with your time and resources.

In fact, the only launch we encourage early stage course creators to do is a small one, the purpose of which is to validate demand for their course and collect feedback from students before investing more time and resources improving and promoting their course.

“If you want to build a real, long-term and sustainable business you don’t need a launch. What you truly need is an engine (funnel) that you can fill up with gasoline (traffic) at a profit.”

Myth #2: You need to create lots of courses

Most of the people we spoke with that have generated over $100,000 in annual revenue from their online course sales did so with just 1 or 2 courses.

Instead of creating a large number of courses, focus on creating one course for one specific audience. Once you’ve created your course, shift your focus to getting as many students as possible for that course before you start creating another one.

“When I reached 6-figures I had two courses. One was an introductory course on getting started with Facebook Marketing at $97 and the other was a signature course for $497 on creating a Facebook Marketing Plan.”

Myth #3: You need a large audience

The size of your audience is important, but not as important as you might think. The obvious benefit of having a large audience is the ability to reach more people. If you have 10,000 people on your email list, for example, your emails will be read by more people than if you have 1,000 people on your email list (all else being equal).

But the size of your audience is not as important as the relationship you build with your audience. A small audience that knows, likes, and trusts you, is far more valuable than a large audience that barely knows who you are.

“You don’t need a big list to get to 6-figures but you do need to care about people who are on your list and do your best to serve them with excellence. To get to 6-figures all you need is 200 customers at a $500 price level.”

Myth #4: Your course needs to be perfect

Perfectionism has prevented more course creators from publishing their courses than perhaps anything else. But there is one big problem with perfection: it is subjective.

What you think is perfect is probably not the same as what your customers think is perfect. Plus, your course does not have to be perfect in order for it to be valuable.If your course is good enough to help someone, then it is good enough to publish. Published is better than perfect.

“Money follows momentum, not perfection. That means that you don’t need your website or your course to be perfect. I’ve re-recorded our core product six times since its start in May, 2015. Just get started and get sales. That’s the most important part at the beginning.”

Myth #5: You have to sell expensive courses

You don’t need to charge thousands of dollars for your courses to achieve a 6-figure income. Many course creators reach 6-figures by selling courses for a few hundred dollars each, sometimes less.

A popular pricing strategy is to create an inexpensive (or even free) introductory course, which upsells a more advanced course at a higher price point. With this approach, you can sell multiple courses to the same customer, instead of having to acquire a brand new customer at a high price point for every sale.

Another approach is to create a membership site with ongoing training, charging your students a recurring monthly subscription fee instead of a one-time purchase.

“When I reached 6-figures in annual sales, I had 4,100 people on my email list, 3 courses (ranging from $100 to $360), and a handful of eBooks (priced from $5 to $60). Many of my eBooks and courses built upon each other, so a client often purchased multiple products from me in a short time period.”

Don’t let the myths stop you from building a successful business

The demand for online education is booming right now, and consequently, it’s not hard to find courses and training on how to create and sell online courses.

And although there is plenty of great training creating by people that have a proven track record of creating and selling online courses successfully, there is some not-so-great training out there as well.

As a general rule, be wary of anyone that tells you that there is only one way to create and sell online courses. With thousands of people and companies selling courses using Thinkific, we’ve seen the data. There is more than one way to build a successful online course business, and we have plenty of case studies to prove it.

You don’t need to do a big launch for your first course. You don’t need to create lots of courses to be successful, or have a huge audience, or create the perfect course, or sell your course at a high price in order to be successful.

Have these approaches worked for others? In many cases, yes. But they aren’t the only ways to build your online course business.

What we did identify among our most successful customers, however, are some common patterns. Based on those patterns, we’ve outlined a specific framework for building a successful online course business.

We outlined that framework in our downloadable guide, which I highly recommend reading if you aspire to build a 6-figure business selling online courses:

Tyler Basu is the Content Marketing Manager at Thinkific. When he's not creating content to help people create and sell online courses, you can find him writing articles and interviewing successful entrepreneurs for Lifestyle Business Magazine & Podcast.